


The Message

by saliache



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bondage, Butt Plugs, Dubious Consent, Figging, First Age, Fisting, Gen, Himring, Improper Use of Ósanwe, Irony, M/M, Orgasm Control, Orgasm Denial, Other, Physiology, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 02:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13377975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saliache/pseuds/saliache
Summary: A messenger bearing the mark of the Enemy comes to Himring in the night. Maedhros is not amused.Sequel to Of the King of the Alders.





	1. a midnight surprise

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Of the King of the Alders](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12012150) by [RaisingCaiin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin). 



> Reading that story before this one, while not strictly necessary, is probably a good idea.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A messenger bearing the mark of the Enemy comes to Himring in the night. Maedhros is not amused.

Night was falling. The wind, already ever cold, sharpened teeth of ice upon every corner of the impenetrable fortress of Himring. The sentries that patrolled its great curtain wall huddled deep in their furs and lingered by the fires lit in the watchtowers that stood vigilant along the great bulwark of the walls, but no fire would they take with them; the light would ruin their eyes even if the howling, roaring wind did not snuff it out first. 

No one should have been abroad; these were killing conditions, even for the Eldar. Yet as they sharpened their sight into the gloom beyond, those stationed over the great gates could discern a single, solitary figure picking its way toward them, quite carelessly. 

“Ho!” cried the bravest among them. “Who comes?” 

No one should have been able to hear the lone voice that responded. “Only I.” 

As if on command the wind died down to a sullen whisper, allowing them to see before them a figure wrapped in a great dark cloak and standing no more than a horse-length before the gates. 

_ How- _

“I bear a message from my lord.” 

A lord other than he of the grim cast, the one hand, who held Himring in his tight and only fist?

What little they could see of the stranger, through eyes blasted and squinting in the icy squall, engendered no confidence – in him, his message, or his lord.

“And what makes you think that Himring would listen to a  _ message _ from your so-termed  _ lord _ ?” came the response, although the voice that cried out wavered, thin and weak. “The device upon your chest marks you well enough – turncoat and traitor! Himring welcomes not the Enemy, nor the presence of any of His!”

And it seemed to them, even as high and as far from the stranger as they stood, that the figure smiled, though the heavy cowl he wore should have prevented them seeing any such thing. “Presence? The very stones of Himring Hill know me, and they will acknowledge the right of my blood if you will not – and I  _ will _ pass, with or without you.”

He gestured not, nor raised a hand, but the wood of the great gate shuddered and groaned like a living thing even without a soul to its chains or its pulleys, and yielded before him. 

-

For the first time in centuries, the great bells at Himring tolled a warning pattern over the snow. 

_ Awake! Awake! The enemy is within our walls and we are attacked! Awake!  _

 

Soldiers tumbled into the great courtyard, trampling the snow into mud and slush. Many were half-dressed or had grabbed the nearest weapon at hand, but at their fore was an entire company of ready soldiers, each armed with a long spear, and they formed a living cordon to keep the enemy out. 

By the time he had come to the center of the great outer courtyard, the messenger was forced to slow his steps or else impale himself upon the spears of the vanguard.

But the messenger surveyed them as if they were no more than a slight hindrance to his passage, and he addressed them as though he were some great captain, come to review their quality and disappointed to find them lacking.

“Is it custom for the lord of Himring to depart so far from the famed hospitality of the north, that he would cast his guests out into the ice and the darkness?”

“No guest may you be, while you bear the banner of the Enemy!” came the reply, and an Elf arrayed in the cloak and plumes of a captain came to the fore. The eight-pointed star shone on her breastplate and her eyes were sparks in a face pale as ice. “No messenger are you! Traitor I name you, scapegrace and foul carrion-bait!” 

The messenger flinched as if wounded. “How cruel you have grown,” he murmured. “To attack one of your own so quickly!” 

His shrouded gaze swept through all assembled, and many stepped back or look away rather than meet that challenge. “Where is the lord of Himring, so that I may give my message and cause you no more trouble?” 

Aught that might have come as a reply was lost as the doors to the great hall opened. Firelight spilled out onto the muddy snow, but it was weak and attenuated. 

“Well might you ask,” said the lord of Himring himself, pushing forward from among his own guards. He was still shrugging into his cloak, so quickly had he come. The guards stepped back for him, and he stopped between them and the messenger like a living shield. “But I hope you might indulge me a question in turn. Is it custom for the lord of Himring to be roused from his bed for every bedraggled wanderer who stirs up his sorcery to demand kingly treatment?”

“I admit that I hardly know.” The messenger bowed, but shallowly. “But why would I be deserving of less, you who I would call kinsman?” 

The lord of Himring stepped forward with some anger at such familiar terms of address, but the stranger did not yield. A hand swept up to remove the messenger’s cowl, but whose hand it was none could say. 

A shout of dismay rose up from those assembled, for the messenger’s face was well known, and its bearer much beloved.

The lord of Himring stopped where he stood, and raised a trembling hand – his left hand, his only hand – as if he very much wished to test the contours of that face.

To see if its flush of good health and the meat on its cheeks were solid, were palpable, were –  _ real _ .

But he touched him not.

“Begone,” the lord of Himring whispered instead, hoarsely. “Begone from me, wight, and take my hatred of your master with you!”

“But my lord uncle,” the stranger said. In the light of their torches his eyes were too placid, too empty, too still. “I come bearing a message for you. Will you hear it, or must I meet your conditions first?”

The lord of Himring seemed as if struck silent.

“I am told that I make a most pleasing bargain,” said the stranger. “Should you like to see that for yourself?” 


	2. like wind through falling leaves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some messages need to be delivered, conventionally or not, whether Maedhros wants them or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of this chapter, this fic is no longer considered Gen, and archive warnings now apply.

Maedhros had done his very best to keep his nephew safe  _ (to keep him close, keep him hidden)  _ while they debated what they might do for him.  _ (surely there would be something they could do for him) _

Messages had been sent to Findaráto in Nargothrond, asking whether Curufin and Celegorm ( _ still Curufinwë and Tyelkormo, in Nargothrond _ ) still abided with him, and whether he might pass a message along to them, and the boy  _ (but he was not a boy any longer, was he, Tyelperinquar)  _ had been locked within the fastness of Himring, where he would be comfortable but could not escape while Maedhros and Maglor held counsel. 

Counsel that it seemed would no longer be required, for the guard that they had set to his door was huddled, shaking, at its open foot. 

“He is gone,” Maedhros said. He did not bother to ask – the state of the guard, and the door, told him all he needed to know. 

Tyelperinquar was free.  

“I am sorry, my lord,” the guard, a Noldo, whispered. He could not look either Maedhros or Maglor in the eye, utter shame and misery writ clear across every plane of his face. 

His hand pumped desperately between his legs, stopping not even for the presence of his lords. Its motions alternated between stroking a flushed erection, and tugging fruitlessly at a dark thong bound round its length, preventing his release. 

“What,” Maglor started, but Maedhros raised his hand – his left hand – for silence. 

“Attend him.” 

“Atten-“ Maglor sputtered. “What? Brother, how?” 

“He cannot stop himself. Do it for him.” 

Maglor looked at him incredulously, but laid a shaking hand ( _ his right, a sadistic mirror of that which Maedhros had lost _ ) over the guard’s eyes. “Sleep.” 

The guard’s hand faltered and then slackened, in tandem with his eyelids. His head drooped down upon his chest, and Maglor snatched his hand away as though burned. “Brother. What-?”

“Hair. Torn from the maker’s head and twisted with his seed to elicit lust without surcease.” And highly effective when one would not succumb to more prosaic methods of torture, Maedhros did not add. 

Though he could have. Even if he had been more familiar with a crimson cord than a dark. 

_ (Even unadulterated pleasure dimmed, when it knew neither end nor variation. And despair was despair, no matter the methods used to elicit it.)  _   


Maglor looked as though he would like to ask whose hair had gone into such a piece of handiwork  _ (who would know such a particular design, who would use it - so alike to the spells of the Eldar but so utterly wretched in form and practice) _ but even his willful obliviousness could not miss that particular dark shade. 

“But, brother. Please, you must believe me –the outer walls have been patrolled without cease since he came, and he has not been seen slipping away over them yet.” 

As if one with the will of Gorthaur behind him could not evade even Elven eyes! But that would not have been why Tyelperinquar had been sent back to them. 

“He is still here. He is hiding.” 

“Seeking our aid?” Maglor asked. Foolishly. 

“Plotting.” Maedhros could hear the curtness in his own voice, but he cared not if Maglor’s naive ( _ unhurt, untrammeled, unbeaten _ ) soul deemed itself wounded by it. “He will have been sent to us with a goal in mind. There will be a plan – targets, ends. Makalaurë. Find him.” 

_ Ill thought, ill words, ill deeds.  _ Gorthaur had promised, once, that this was his future, and it was as much an insight into the Enemy’s mind as it was a map for that which Maedhros had been made to endure. 

_ Ten thousand years of pain _ , Gorthaur had said. Well. The seduction of Tyelperinquar – quiet little Tyelpё, who had no taste for weaponry or even for the blood of the hunt – into the Enemy’s fell ways would age Maedhros a good thousand of those years all on its own, for Maedhros’s nephew had no place in this. This fight was between him and his Enemy, and to bring an innocent like Tyelperinquar into its net was cruel and unnecessary in a way that Maedhros really should have expected of Gorthaur. 

He could not afford for what was left of his will to shrivel into ash at the thought of Tyelperinquar, bent until he was broken and left to bear Gorthaur’s fell magics cupped within his bloody palms. 

"Brother?" Maglor pleaded.    
  
“I said  _ find him _ . How was this unclear? Set your men to it. Now. Go. Go!”    
  
But even as he said it, Maedhros knew they could only wait. They had already played into Gorthaur’s hands thus far, by allowing his messenger within their walls – by showing Tyelperinquar mercy, in a sense of the word that Maedhros at least should have remembered was outdated by the time they set foot upon these shores.    
  
Mercy did not always mean life.    
  
Speaking of. . .    
  
The stricken guard at his feet stirred and groaned.    
  
Maedhros drew the sword that never left his side, and told himself that his first attempt would be to cut the bond from the guard’s body.    
  
He would bestow a different form of mercy at need, did that first fail him. 

* * *

Maglor’s searches proved fruitless, and in the morning, the cooks discovered that one of their own had been stricken next. She lived, but she had been hung from a roasting spit in the manner of a deer to be flayed – upside down, bound at hands and knees. Her skin was flushed by exposure to volatile oils – concentrated from some manner of spice they imported, Maedhros was informed – and she had been gagged with a root vegetable – an onion, he was told, which induced uncontrollable weeping in those who prepared it. And, as he made himself watch, impartially, the shaking healers removed something else from between her legs.    
  
They could not identify it, beyond guessing that it was yet another vegetable. He could have told them that it was called ginger, and that when shaved of its skin it imparted a stinging bite that spread among all the part of the body thus affected.    
  
And yet.    
  
Her eyes were focused inward, but dreaming and self-absorbed rather than pained, and when they lowered her gently to the floor, her cries were not of pain or even humiliation.    
  
_ (he had not known that pleasure was possible that way, that had not been his experience at all)  _   
  
"He is growing – creative," Maglor said, wincing.   
  
"He is growing bold,” Maedhros corrected, absently.    
  
Tyelperinquar could not be planning this. Tyelperinquar couldn’t know what had happened to Maedhros in the depths of Melkor’s fortress, and was repeating itself remarkably faithfully across the bodies of his precious people.    
__  
__ (It was all Gorthaur. It had to be. Tyelperinquar was innocent.)   


* * *

Another three days passed without any incident more alarming than the regular reports of missing food, or the theft of an odd trinket or piece of bedding. ( _ what was his plan? _ )   
  
And then, on the fourth day, the dreams started.    
  
Or so Maedhros was told.    
  
He experienced none of this himself, but his people took to creeping along their own halls in packs, their eyes wary and voices hushed. More than once, the guards reported, the more agitated had drawn weapons on one another upon rounding corners and finding that their pack-mates were no longer alone.

And then, the fifth day, they realized what else had changed. The Orc raids along their northern border had all but ceased.

“It is not right,” Maglor whispered, his long fingers tracing the areas their scouts reported abandoned. “Brother. What are we facing here?” 

“Gorthaur.”

“I do not doubt that, but what is he  _ doing _ ?” Maglor agonized.

“His most significant advance force has succeeded. Why waste his other resources, until he knows where to re-deploy them to greater effect?”

Maglor looked like he might be sick. “You cannot mean Tyelperinquar.”

Oh, Maedhros could. “Do you really imagine that this could be peace?” 

_ To me, _ he did not say. For of course it would be to him, foolish creature that he was, to expect any could simply walk away from such an Enemy. 

And knowing  _ that  _ meant that there were only two places Tyelperinquar could strike next.

His nephew – or rather Gorthaur, through and using his nephew  _(it had to be - Tyelperinquar was innocent!)_ – waited only upon him, Maedhros realized. 

* * *

In the end, he chose the stables. They seemed to him more congenial than the kennels, if only for the warmth that rose up through their floors from the great underground furnaces that made Himring bearable, and surely Tyelperinquar would not come to him straight away. 

And yet.

The warmth that he had come there seeking turned against him, conspiring with the smells of leather and metal, the ungiving feel of stone through his thin bedroll, and the distant shouts of the sentries on the walls.

Maedhros dreamed. And badly.

_ -in Angband again, trapped and filthy and miserable, kneeling and oh stars he does not want to cringe, the thought of his fear is humiliating but the fear of the monster in front of him is so much worse. _

_ Morgoth's lieutenant beams down upon him benevolently, as tall and beautiful as a young tree and crowned in hair a more vibrant red than Maedhros's own. Curled tresses and heavy braids alike tumble down to bare feet and across the floor between them, trapping Maedhros like a broken-winged bird in a net. _

_ -why is Gorthaur beautiful is not evil meant to be ugly is that not the very reward one is meant to reap for defying the Powers- _

_ But Gorthaur leans over him and the weight of his presence is suffocating. _

_ In the one hand, his left, he bears a bridle, over-elaborate and sporting a cruel bit. In the other, his right, Gorthaur has a collar, spiked inside and out. _

_ “Pretty thing,” he says, and his touch is fire when he runs it through Maehdros’s shorn hair, as if fondling a wayward pet. “Now, tell me true: art thou more steed or hound?” _

_ Neither, for I am Elda and far higher than a beast for you to fondle! Maedhros should be spitting the words, but – he is not. And then the bit is between his teeth and the collar is pricking at his neck and he would hand to Gorthaur his very leash but he is missing a hand- _

He was alone, when he woke. And yet.

Beside him lay a bridle, uncleaned and twisted with dark sweat, and in his hair was braided a crown of alder leaves.

No alders grew so far north, upon Himring.

_ (The closest grove must be by Nargothrond. Or perhaps a little further north, near Tol Sirion.)   _

 

* * *

Maglor had not been so utterly wroth with him in centuries.

It was easy to forget, sometimes, that this was the Noldo who had slain Ulfang, who had held the Gap for so long in the face of such impossible odds.

“He could have slain you as you slept. What part of this plan recommended itself as the best course of action?” 

But the accusation was tempered by the way in which neither of their gazes could leave the crown of alder leaves for long. It lay on the table between them like a silent accusation. 

_ (an accusation of what) _ __  
  
“He would not have slain me. Gorthaur’s message is for me, and for me alone. Were I with others, as I have been these five days past, Tyelperinquar would not have broken cover to come to me.”    
  
“And when he does, this is all you get?” Maglor hissed.    


“You are a fool if you think this is not the best possible outcome I could have asked.”    
  
“Oh?” Makalaure was working himself up into a fine fury – the kind that resulted in epics and lays, if he had no brothers convenient to vent it upon instead. “You would have rather he killed you, is that what you are telling me, brother?”    
  
No, it was more that Maedhros was glad Gorthaur had not instructed Tyelperinquar to bridle and collar him, but that was more than Maglor needed to know.    


“We should have turned him away at the gates, as we have done all the others,” he said instead.

“All the others? Even _you?_ ” Maglor shouted.

“Even me.”

( _especially me for I am the reason that Gorthaur has sent him to us at all_ )

_ (saving me was your first mistake, for the Enemy would have kept his amusements well away in Angband and Tyelperinquar would never have been caught up in the doom we have wrought upon ourselves) _

But Maglor must have caught something of his thoughts, for he stepped closer, his hand ( _ the right hand, ever the right hand _ ) sweeping away the mess of leaves and branches that was their nephew's latest handiwork.

"It is growing late," he offered. It was not yet noon. "We have other business that draws our attention. Let us discuss this later."

And they meant to, they did. But with one thing and another than could not be put aside, it was suddenly night again, and they were tired, and they planned to speak again in the morning.

But they would not speak of it in the morning.

For Tyelperinquar awaited his uncle in Maedhros’s own bed. 

* * *

Maedhros had drawn his blade before they had exchanged a single word. “Nephew.”

Not that Tyelperinquar was fazed in the slightest, going by the smile that crawled across his face, sickly sweet as a grimace. “In truth, I renounced my father. What does that make us, I wonder, if we are not uncle and nephew?” 

“Are we not?” But, Maedhros suspected, they both knew the answer to that particular question, if they had both enjoyed Gorthaur’s hospitality. 

The bonds of kinsmanship were nothing to the Enemy. Nothing, that is, that could not be further twisted and exploited to his own cruel ends. 

Maedhros would give Tyelperinquar this one last chance. It was the least he owed his nephew. 

_ (for that was who Tyelperinquar was, no matter how else he had been twisted) _

“The nephew I knew would not have yielded to the Enemy. Not even under torture."

“And yet.” Tyelperinquar twisted upon his bed, as if to show himself off to better advantage. “Have we not just established that we are no longer uncle and nephew, but fellow sufferers beneath an undue yoke?” 

Damn the boy. 

Tyelperinquar smiled, but it seemed strained. “And besides.” With one hand, he drew open his shirt, just far enough that Maedhros could see the red cord across his chest - a bond that echoed the one Tyelperinquar must have placed about the guard, only five days past. 

“Our master gave me strict instructions, and I - I find myself hard-pressed, not to follow them.” 

“He is not my master or yours.” But Maedhros could not look away, for the cord about Tyelperinquar’s chest - the hint as to the only one who could break his enchantment - was a dull, coppered red, not the vibrant crimson that had once bound Maedhros. 

Tyelperinquar’s bonds were his. 

Not the Enemy’s. 

“So you see.” Tyelperinquar’s laugh was almost desperate. “Please. You are the only who can release me.” 

A trap, it had to be a trap. It was too neat, it played to too many hopes and dreams and fears in the most sordid of ways, and surely the Enemy would not relinquish his toys quite so easily. 

And yet. . . 

"What were the conditions of your release? As exactly as you can remember.”

Tyelperinquar winced. 

“You, as you have guessed,” he said, flushing. “But also - your arm. Inside me.” 

_ What.  _

"The right one."

Curse Gorthaur, to the Void and the Everlasting Darkness beyond, Manwe and Varda as his witnesses. . . 

“You are sure?” 

Tyelperinquar seemed to be dissolving past speech. He only nodded, and the tentative beginnings of hope and relief shone upon his face. His eyes never leaving Maedhros, he slipped from the bed to the floor, where he peeled his clothes away, and. . . 

By the Void.  

The cord that Maedhros had glimpsed earlier did not stop at his chest. Instead, beneath his clothes, Tyelperinquar had been knotted into an intricate web of cord that spanned the length of his torso, his hips, his thighs, before culminating in an elaborate cage for his sex. 

The sight should not have stolen Maedhros’s breath. And yet. 

It did. 

_ (this could not be happening)  _

Neither nakedness nor its usual consequences were taboo among their people, and yet. Sex was not the usual way of things between a lord and his captive, the guilty and the wronged - or a man and his nephew. But there was something so infinitely lewd about the sight of Tyelperinquar kneeling  _ (he had ever been sweet, but also proud as his father, and he never listened, he never knelt)  _

Infinitely worse was the fact that Maedhros could feel himself beginning to respond. 

Tyelperinquar’s sex crowned, flushed and weeping, between his thighs, even as it was forced into submission by the bright cord. Despite its cage, though, it did not wane with Maedhros’s attention - if anything, it flushed darker still, as if Tyelperinquar enjoyed his gaze. 

Maedhros had seen other victims of the Enemy who had come to harbor such twisted desires, and had always been unfailingly, unquestioningly glad that he had turned them away at his gates. 

_ (but if he had known that the afflicted could wear their desires as prettily as this) _

He had to call the guards. Now. 

He did not.

"Turn.” How convenient it would have been, if he could have claimed that the words left his mouth without his volition. But of course they did not. "Hands and knees." 

That had been the command for him, and, judging by his alacrity to obey, it must have been the same for Tyelperinquar, who - 

Who scrambled to turn, to take to his hands and knees, to present himself for Maedhros’s consideration. 

From the depths of his body, though, something shone. _ (not ginger, no more ginger)  _

A single tug was enough to free it. _(a message tube)_

It was coated in oil, and Tyelperinquar’s own waste. 

“For your reply, I assume,” came Tyelperinquar’s voice. “I am sorry for the mess - I was not permitted to remove it.”

What- 

What response could he possibly make to that? 

“Go.” And when Tyelperinquar whimpered, as if he would be abandoned: “Clean yourself. Prepare yourself. Then return.” 

With an indeterminate noise of relief, Tyelperinquar scrambled to his feet, and bolted toward the attached washroom. 

Maedhros found that he preferred not to think of what might be necessary if that tube had been in place for much longer, but it was better to contemplate the thing itself rather than the one who had been made to bear it as he rid himself of its traces. 

So. 

The tube was made for a man with one hand to open, and enclosed within it were five sheets of soft, rich, heavy vellum.

It was beautiful material. It always had been, even though it could hardly have been necessary to take an entire Elven skin for each sheet. But slaves’ lives were cheap, Maedhros supposed, when one had enough of them. 

There were no words he would commit to such profane paper, nothing that he could say to excuse what had been made of Tyelperinquar, and yet - knowing what they were, and how they had been made, he could hardly just burn them. 

He settled for setting them aside. 

“My lord?” 

The address sounded so wrong coming from Tyelperinquar’s mouth, and directed at him. And when Maedhros turned to tell him so, Tyelperinquar looked ghastly pale in the pale light of the crystal lamp, and - 

so devastatingly vulnerable, in his uncertainty. 

so terribly striking, in his neck-to-thigh twists of cord. 

and of course, still so fully, utterly aroused. 

Seeing where Maedhros’s attention remained, Tyelperinquar gave another of those soft smiles, and slipped forward from the washroom door to prostrate himself before Maedhros once more. 

_ (that he was clean or not made no difference) _

_ (he was still beautiful, and Maedhros was damned)  _

"Are you prepared?” His voice was not quite steady, even to his own ears.

"Does it matter?" Tyelperinquar murmured. .

"I do not want to hurt you.”  _ (I do ~~not~~ want to do this) _

"Then yes, yes, I am ready, please!” The anticipation in Tyelperinquar’s voice was a twist in Maedhros’s gut - in all this, he had been able to put aside the enormity of what he was meant to do. 

His arm. It was his arm that Gorthaur had mandated necessary to save his nephew from torment. 

If he had to walk back to Angband himself, Maedhros thought, he would see the Enemy pay for this. 

He unbuckled his bracer, and pushed the sleeve up past his elbow.  His arm narrowed to a smooth point of skin and bone. He did not want to look at it.

"Brace yourself."

For all his care, Tyelperinquar still screamed. 

It was easy _ (too easy) _ to sit  _ (to watch) _ as Tyelperinquar chased his release, thrusting himself back upon that spur of flesh and bone as if he 

_ (if Curufinwe could see them now)  _

Soon _ (too soon) _ Tyelperinquar’s breathing grew erratic, and he threw back his head with a cry. 

There something - Something - in his voice that Maedhros found himself responding to, his loins tightening with unwanted ardor. 

He would not respond to it. He would not!

But when Tyelperinquar cried out again; there was Song in his voice.

Maedhros grit his teeth and forced himself into rock-solid steadiness. There was no need to think about the warm pressure on his maimed arm, nor the sweaty, slick flesh beneath his hand  _ (his left hand, his only hand) _ . He needed that hand to help keep Tyelperinquar steady, not to pleasure himself.

This was not for him. This was justice, recompense, the least he could do. 

_ (excuses, excuses, all excuses) _

His erection throbbed, aching despite all his best efforts to the contrary. Not just Song, then, but an aphrodisiac in the oil, or pheromones secreted through the skin, or... ( _ something dangerous, his mind whispered _ )

He hardly noticed when Tyelperinquar came, dripping onto the floor, and immediately turned to nuzzle his face into Maedhros' groin, mouth moving over flesh and cloth as if he meant to swallow it all whole.

Clothed or not, Maedhros found himself thrusting fiercely into Tyelperinquar's mouth. He lost himself in the pleasure, mind spiraling out along familiar paths.  _ His hands, for he still had two, were fisted in dark hair, dragging that lovely head with its beautiful mouth until he came with a stifled cry and - _

_-a net was thrown about his mind with a slush, and somewhere there echoed a sound like a jail door closing._ Maedhros was flung back into his own body, breathless and gasping. 

There was triumph in Tyelperinquar’s eyes.

A trap. It had always been a trap.

"Did you know?" 

He sank to the floor. His mind reeled at the enormity of the peril he found himself facing.

"Did you know that Gorthaur sent you as a trap?"

Tyelperinquar leaned in, smiling, and kissed him on the mouth. "Ai, uncle fairest! Gorthaur may have sent me, but the trap was mine entirely."

“Traitor.” He should have slain his nephew at the gate.

Tyelperinquar kissed him again. "Oh, but wasn't I good at it?"

He could weep, would have wept if his body hadn't been so numb.

"The Enemy has corrupted you well, I see." The world was starting to waver now, as Gorthaur's ( _ Tyelperinquar's _ ) magics sank into his mind and tore at his thoughts like fishhooks.

"How do you think I evaded your patrols with such ease and entered your room unheeded?" Tyelperinquar asked from somewhere above him. "I had a good teacher, and you know how much I have always loved to learn."

"What would you have done if I had refused you?" His lips were becoming numb, his tongue as heavy as a millstone.

To his dimming sight, Tyelperinquar’s eyes shone very much like Gorthaur's.

"An eternity of arousal and denial," he murmured. "Would that truly have been so bad? But enough of that. We have a long way to go before we reach the gates of Angband."  


End file.
